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Healthcare.gov Sends Personal Data To Over a Dozen Tracking Websites
An anonymous reader tips an Associated Press report saying that Healthcare.gov is sending users' personal data to private companies. The information involved is typical ad-related analytic data: "...it can include age, income, ZIP code, whether a person smokes, and if a person is pregnant. It can include a computer's Internet address, which can identify a person's name or address when combined with other information collected by sophisticated online marketing or advertising firms." The Electronic Frontier Foundation confirmed the report, saying that data is being sent from Healthcare.gov to at least 14 third-party domains.
The EFF says, "Sending such personal information raises significant privacy concerns. A company like Doubleclick, for example, could match up the personal data provided by healthcare.gov with an already extensive trove of information about what you read online and what your buying preferences are to create an extremely detailed profile of exactly who you are and what your interests are. It could do all this based on a tracking cookie that it sets which would be the same across any site you visit. Based on this data, Doubleclick could start showing you smoking ads or infer your risk of cancer based on where you live, how old you are and your status as a smoker. Doubleclick might start to show you ads related to pregnancy, which could have embarrassing and potentially dangerous consequences such as when Target notified a woman's family that she was pregnant before she even told them. "
The EFF says, "Sending such personal information raises significant privacy concerns. A company like Doubleclick, for example, could match up the personal data provided by healthcare.gov with an already extensive trove of information about what you read online and what your buying preferences are to create an extremely detailed profile of exactly who you are and what your interests are. It could do all this based on a tracking cookie that it sets which would be the same across any site you visit. Based on this data, Doubleclick could start showing you smoking ads or infer your risk of cancer based on where you live, how old you are and your status as a smoker. Doubleclick might start to show you ads related to pregnancy, which could have embarrassing and potentially dangerous consequences such as when Target notified a woman's family that she was pregnant before she even told them. "
a bigger fuckup than Obamacare?
Give me a H
Give me an I
Give me a P
Give me an A
Give me an A
What does that spell HIPAA
What does that mean! The government should fine itself!
I think if the government needs to fine itself, they should refund the money back to the tax payers for services failed to render.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
no, but you needed to not be a drooling MSNBC idiot. Granted their viewership is under a 600K people so I wonder how the hell this idiot get elected president
He's the right color so the greatest PR money could buy convinced tons of poor innercity blacks that this Harvard law professor really understands what life is like in the ghetto, is truly one of their own, and really wants to help them gain opportunities and is not a member of the monied political class at all. Automatically getting about 13% of the vote is a great start to any campaign, that plus the approximately 50% who vote Democrat anyway and you get to be president.
Till we actually have a colorblind society and stop playing groups against each other divide-and-conquer style, expect more of the same. The goal is that something other than reason and fitness for the job become the main voting criteria. They do it because it still works. Oh and anybody who thinks a candidate endorsed by either major party is going to really change the status quo is just plain stupid. The purpose of the major parties is to maintain the status quo and see that it changes only very slowly, with only major movements backed up by tremendous perserverence (i.e. women's suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement) able to actually change anything, that way the various monied interests that put candidates into office feel like their investments are protected. It isn't about representing you at all.
You didn't need to be a drooling FoxNews zombie to see that Healthcare.gov was a bad idea.
But the reason it is a bad idea is not that all government does is bad - rather this illustrates why things like this should be managed by a body that is guaranteed to not be in bed with business and is stricly regulated. Whether or not this can be called corruption in the legal sense, it certainly is morally corrupt.
There is no such thing as "a body that is guaranteed to not be in bed with business."
Also, "strictly regulated" often just means "whitewashed by some taxpayer-funded agency with no teeth."
Rather than "strictly regulated" we need "transparent and publicly accountable" in order to resist corruption.
Suggestion: Everyone go report this as a HIPAA violation.
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